The cabinet has increased the tax burden for individuals by €1.5bn as part of its plans to raise €18bn to cut the budget deficit, prime minister Mark Rutte said on Tuesday.

The rest of the money is coming from ‘hard cuts’ in spending, the prime minister said during the weekly parliamentary question hour.
D66 leader Alexander Pechtold had asked the prime minister to give the figures. He said taxes have gone up by €12bn, basing his claims on calculations by the government’s macro economic policy unit CPB.